Lana Del Rey | The Written Documentary

Featured Posts

Yes To Heaven
4,710

Yes To Heaven
4,710

Hi, all! I was currently sending these posts to @Werk, but I decided to just make a thread due to @littlepotter's advice. Knowing Lana's backstory is wonderful for anyone (in my sole opinion), so enjoy this since I took a lot of time to do it! (I had help from lanadelrey.wikia.com and many, many different sites containing random knowledge.)

LANA DEL REY | THE WRITTEN DOCUMENTARY

June 21st, 1985 - Elizabeth Woolridge Grant was born in Lake Placid, New York.

She was raised by a domain developer (Robert Grant Jr.), who after working as a Grey Group copywriter and major executive switched over to investing in domains, and a Grey account executive/high school teacher and daughter of a regional sales manager for American Maize Company (Patricia Hill-Grant).

Lana was born, shortly after they married, on the aforementioned date and was an active and outgoing toddler, even starring in a Christmas fashion show in 1987/1988! Lana also says that her biggest inspiration is Kurt Cobain, having seen him around this time of her life on TV one day and being mesmerized. Here are some pictures of her as a toddler!

And then on March 3rd, 1993, the youngest member of the Grant family was born - Charlie Grant.

The Grant siblings -

(unknown date)

2010/2011

2012/2013

2013/2014

The earliest known count of Lana's musical endeavors begins with Lana being in choir where she performed many songs - Notably 'Psallite' and many Christmas songs. Even a solo part in a Les Miserables chorus act! Lana recounts writing her first song in 1997, at the age of 12 years old. The song was titled 'China Palace' and was about being a princess... Also featuring strawberry daiquiris! Around this time she also began to experiment with alcohol thinking it was cool and, by the age of 14, was sent to Kent, a boarding school in Connecticut, to help with her addiction. She says she had a teacher there, Mr. Campbell, that showed her the greatness of music. It's also known that Lana had experience with various drugs such as cocaine and meth, judging by her Facebook posts on her personal account.

Kent school yearbooks + Lana and her friends at Kent!

After graduating from Kent, she was accepted to the State University of New York at Geneseo but instead spent a year living on Long Island with her aunt and uncle working as a waitress at Ruby Tuesday's. Her uncle taught her how to play guitar which enabled her to have instrumentals to her lyrics. That was when she began to do performances around town. The following fall, she attended Fordham Univeristy, majoring in philosophy (focusing on metaphysics). During college, she lived in The Bronx, and then in New Jersey where she volunteered at homeless shelters and youth drug and alcohol outreach programs. For a while, she was in New Mexico/Nevada helping paint and rebuild houses on Native American reservations. It was not until she began college that she had really stopped drinking, thanking an incident where she lost her parent's car after waking up one morning and not having any idea where she parked it. She claimed that after sobering up, she felt out of sync with campus life. She also partook in occasional modeling jobs for Hollister, Ford Teens, and more!

The earliest known song that we have is called 'White Pontiac Heaven', an acapella demo of the song 'Axl Rose Husband' (which was also recorded in the same supposed year, 2002), and she would have been 17 and attending Kent still. Although, it's a curious statement on the songs being from 2002. Since there is about a 2 year gap between these songs and the next songs. Lana began work on her mixtape in 2005 during college, with a recording session for the song 'Fordham Road'. The lyric "the stone Mary in the garden" references the statue of Mary in the courtyard Queen's Court Residential College, which she would've passed every day to go to class. After her sessions with Johnathan Jones, she decided to leave out Fordham Road and began to work on what is now known as 'Sirens' (a fan-made name, since the actual mixtape did not have a name!)

(fan-made cover!)

It's unknown how long the mixtape was in the works for but by the end of 2006 she had begun giving out/selling the CDs at her performances. In 2005, she also completed 2 EPs containing songs from Sirens, and on the first one, songs that did not appear on Sirens. The EPs are called Young Like Me (Alt. title: Rock Me Stable) & From The End. YLM was completed by April 25th, 2005 and FTE was completed by December 13th, 2005 (when they were registered.) Sometime after Sirens was done, Lana entered a songwriting contest and while she didn't win, she still earned a prize! This is where she met Van Wilson, an A&R who would help secure a contract in the future. She is featured in an early interview singing a song titled 'Pawn Shop Blues' that was featured in her 2010 album, Lana Del Ray (AKA Lizzy Grant). Though at the time it was called 'Bread and Oranges'!

Songs from 2006:

Spoiler

Sirens (Mixtape)

Bread and Oranges (Pawn Shop Blues demo)

Methamphetamines (a VERY early demo of 'Old Money', which appeared on her 2014 album, Ultraviolence!)

Money Hunny

Your Band is All The Rage

During this time, her stage names evolved a lot going from May Jailer (which is the guise that the entirety of Sirens was written under.) to Lizzy Grant and The Phenomena then to Sparkle Jump Rope Queen and ending with a shortened version of her real name, Lizzy Grant. And during her senior year of college, she was signed to a 50k contract with 5 Points Records. With the money she found a $400 a month trailer and made the move to a trailer park in New Jersey.

In 2007, she recorded a demo EP titled 'No Kung Fu' and began to send it to various producers to begin work on her debut album. After reviewing it, David Kahne had agreed to do the producing for her. Also sometime in 2007, she recorded a demo CD for unknown reasons that contained a 'Kill Kill' demo, a demo of a song called 'Pin Up Galore', and a 'Put Me in a Movie' demo. David and Lana began work in the same year, finishing the album 'Lana Del Ray' on February 28th, 2008. On the same note, Lana began going by forms of Lana Del Rey, beginning with Lana Ray around 2007. The earliest known occurrence being in the song 'Wayamaya' where she sings " remember we came in May, and we changed our names, to Lana and Ray". The origin of the name is debatable, Lana has made a claim that she thought of it while on vacation and wanted something that rolled off the tongue. But if you research, you will find a post by a previous boyfriend (Arthur Lynn) that states he wants to name his children Lana and Ray. She then sings it as Lana Ray Loreen in a demo of 'Brite Lites' which she did with Steven, but it eventually changed to Lana Del Ray and in the end to Lana Del Rey. Back on track: Lana also recorded a full version of the album, Lana Del Ray, with Steven. Though, that still remains unheard to this day.

Lana and David Kahne

Lana had most of the album written already, saying she was lucky enough to write three smashing songs (Queen of the Gas Station, Jump, and Put Me in a Movie) in one week since her inspiration can leave for weeks to years at a time. In 2008, she released a sample EP of the album titled 'Kill Kill' that featured three tracks from the album. After the album was finished, the original release date was Valentine's Day 2009. It's unknown when the album's name was changed from 'Nevada' to 'Lana Del Ray' but masters of the tracks had the Nevada name attached to them! Her label had began to give her some trouble and the album as a whole was shelved until January 5th, 2010, when it was put onto iTunes. The album only stayed there for 3 months before being removed in March with Lana buying the rights back to the album after going a different route in her music. In 2012, Lana had expressed desire to re-release the album, but nothing ever came to light. Funny note: During the recording of Kill Kill, the song was called 'The Ocean' but David had found that title to be boring. In anger, Lana scratched out The Ocean and wrote Kill Kill!

Lana also recorded an interview at her trailer park in 2008, talking about the album and other things!

Songs and some performances from 2007:

Spoiler

Disco (+ demos)

Get Drunk (+ demos)

Let My Hair Down (prod. Steven Mertens)

Trash Magic (+ edit) (prod. Steven Mertens)

Wayamaya (prod. Steven Mertens)

Lizzy Grant (Demo CD)

No Kung Fu (Demo EP)

Bentley

Rehab (For K Part 2 demo)

Queen of The Gas Station (acoustic demo)

Yayo (acoustic demo)

Songs and some performances from 2008

Spoiler

Lana Del Ray (Album)

Come When You Call Me America (+ version 2) (prod. Andrew Kravitz)

C U L8r Alligator

Dance for Money

Diet Mtn Dew Baby (demo of 'Diet Mtn Dew')

Elvis

My Song 57

Pin Up Galore

1949 (+ demo)

2009 was more of a slow year for Lana in terms of noteworthy details on what was happening in her life at the time. Mainly, she was doing many performances and meeting with new producers and expanding her song catalog! One song she created during this year (Boarding School) focuses on her time at Kent and brings speculation on what her relationship with Mr. Campbell really was. Though, Lana has admitted to fabricating stories in her music! She also teamed up with Keds to create her own line of sneakers, also doing a video promoting them! Unfortunately, all of the YouTube versions are pitched.

Songs and some performances from 2009:

Spoiler

Hawaiian Tropic (prod. Blockhead)

Heavy Hitter (+ concept beat) (Prod. Blockhead)

Television Heaven (+ acapella demo) (Prod. Blockhead)

Boarding School (Prod. Chris Seefried)

Catch and Release (+ version 2) (Prod. Princess Superstar)

Golden Grill (+ remix) (Prod. Princess Superstar & Nyceboy)

Maha Maha (+ demos) (Prod. Princess Superstar)

Moi Je Joue (Prod. Princess Superstar)

Children of the Bad Revolution (+ demo) (Prod. The Rural & Crispin Hunt)

Diet Mtn Dew (Demo 2) (Prod. Crispin Hunt)

Every Man Gets His Wish (+ version 2) (Prod. Crispin Hunt)

Ooh Baby (Prod. Eg White & Crispin Hunt)

Hundred Dollar Bill (+ demo) (Prod. Jayson Michael & David Kahne)

Motel 6 (Jeff Peretz demo) (Prod. Jeff Peretz)

Stoplight Delite (Prod. Jeff Peretz)

Strangelove (+ demo) (Prod. Robert Logan & Ivor Guest)

All Smiles

Betty Boop Boop

Crooked Cop

Daytona Meth (+ alternate version)

Greenwich

Heartshaped Chevrolet

Motel 6 (acapella & acoustic demo)

Party Girl (+ version 2)

Put Your Lips Together

So Legit

Super Movie

Lana began to work on Born to Die in 2010, even though some songs already had early versions in years prior. We see the birth of iconic Lana Del Rey tracks in this year and she begins to morph from Las Vegas Lizzy to New York Lana in this time period and the songs created this year are heavily showing that. She decides to make a decision of dying her hair that separates her from Lizzy more than anything. She begins working with one of Born to Die's main collaborators (Justin Parker) and the two conjure up early ideas for the album along with songs and images. Lana continues her trend of making music videos for her songs and showcases some demos of Born to Die tracks through them. During this, Lana is also thinking up a name for the album going through names such as G. B. A. (God Bless America), The Best of Lana Del Rey, The Revenge of Lana Del Rey, The World is Ours, and Do You Luv Me Yet? Lana was featured in Tamarama's track 'Live My Life' through barely audible background vocals and was also invited on Mando Diao's MTV Unplugged performance to sing Chet Baker and Gloria with them! It's speculated Lana recorded an unseen music video in this year, due to a tweet that has since been deleted.

2010 Lana

Songs and some performances from 2010:

Spoiler

Daddy Issues (Prod. Aaron LaCrate)

Scarface (Prod. Aaron LaCrate)

Behind Closed Doors (+ demo) (Prod. Anthony Whiting & Miranda Cooper)

Break My Fall (Prod. Anthony Whiting & Miranda Cooper)

Afraid (+ version 2) (Prod. Anthony Butler)

Put The Radio On (Prod. Biff Stannard & Ash Howes)

Million Dollar Man (Demo) (Prod. Chris Braide)

Resistance (Prod. Crispin Hunt)

Dangerous Girl (+ acapella demo) (Prod. Daft Dog)

Be My Daddy (Prod. John Frederick Fortis)

Carmen (Demo & Acapella Demo) (Prod. Justin Parker)

Dum Dum (+ demos) (Prod. Justin Parker)

On Our Way (+ demo) (Prod. Justin Parker)

Velvet Crowbar (Prod. Justin Parker)

I Want It All (+ other demos) (Prod. The Nexus)

National Anthem (Demo 1) (Prod. The Nexux & Justin Parker)

Backfire (Prod. Kid Gloves)

Ghetto Baby (Prod. Kid Gloves)

Jealous Girl (Prod. Kid Gloves)

St. Tropez (Prod. Kid Gloves)

Lolita (Demo 1) (Prod. Liam Howe & Hannah Robinson)

Playing Dangerous (Prod. Mads Louis Hauge & Phil Thornalley)

Meet Me In The Pale Moonlight (Prod. One Louder)

Is It Wrong? (Prod. Paul Herman)

TV in Black and White (+ acapella demo) (Prod. Rick Nowels)

Spender (+ demos) (Prod. Smiler)

Diet Mtn Dew (Demo 3) (Prod. The Flight)

In The Sun (Prod. The Flight)

Kinda Outta Luck (+ demo) (Prod. The Flight)

Playground (Prod. The Flight)

Push Me Down (Prod. The Flight)

Tired of Singing The Blues (Prod. The Flight)

You Can Be The Boss (Prod. The Flight)

Driving in Cars With Boys (+ demo) (Prod. The Nexus)

Prom Song (Gone Wrong) (Prod. The Nexus)

She's Not Me (Prod. The Nexus)

Caught You Boy (Prod. The Rural)

Children of the Bad Revolution (Prod. The Rural)

Girl That Got Away (Prod. The Rural)

Motel 6 (Vicarage) (Prod. The Rural)

Other Woman (Prod. The Rural)

Us Against The World (Prod. The Rural)

Hit and Run (+ version 2) (Prod. Tommy Tysper)

Never Let Me Go (+ concept demo) (Prod. Steven Mertens)

Baby Blue Love

Breaking My Heart

Criminals Run The World

Delicious

Dynamite

Go Go Dancer (+ version 2 and concept demo)

Hangin' Around

I Was in a Bad Way

Match Made in Heaven

My Best Days

Noir

Summer of Sam

2011 was Lana's breakout year and with her work on Born to Die coming to completion, she posted Video Games to her YouTube which almost immediately became a widespread phenomenon and within the next month, Lana was signed to Stranger Records. She had also posted a demo of 'Diet Mtn Dew' to her YouTube about 2 months prior to Video Games and the original music video of Blue Jeans a month after VG. Ben Mawson and Ed Millett, from TAP Management, had helped Lana get out of the 5 Points Record label she was still signed to and she was then working with Interscope and Polydor Records. Blue Jeans was released along-side Video Games on Oct 16, 2011. Born to Die was preparing for it's winter release and soon enough The Guardian was sent a 19 track sampler of the Born to Die album (then called 'Born 2 Die') containing the currently unreleased songs "Live or Die", "Paris", "Puppy Love", "Driving in Cars With Boys", "Hundred Dollar Bill", "Ooh Baby", "You Can Be The Boss", "Kinda Outta Luck", and "Put The Radio On". It's unknown as to why these were left off the album, or if these weren't actually for the album then why they were on the sampler. Lana had also performed You Can Be The Boss along with some Born To Die songs, so it's very likely that was meant for the album. Lana stated that Video Games was not intended to be a single, but since so many people had fallen in love with the song, it was released as one, but that she still gets sad when singing that song. Thanks to Interscope and Polydor, in 2011, she met two of her most well contributed producers, Emile Haynie and Rick Nowels. With promotion beginning for the album, Born To Die (song) was released as the 3rd single on December 30th. Though, the music video was posted earlier on December 14th due to it leaking. She started performing in many venues and was becoming more prominent every day. She was lucky enough to win the Q award for The Next Big Thing in October.

Lana at the Q Awards

Songs and some performances from 2011:

Spoiler

Damn You (Prod. Chris Braide)

Hollywood's Dead (Prod. Chris Braide)

Queen of Disaster (Prod. Chris Braide)

Roses (Prod. Chris Braide)

Beautiful Player (Prod. Darren Coleman & Simon Katz)

Blue Jeans (Demo) (Prod. Emile Haynie & Dan Heath)

Gangsta Boy (Prod. Harry James Angus)

Live or Die (+ demo) (Prod. Jarrod Rogers)

Born to Die (+ demos) (Prod. Justin Parker)

Last Girl on Earth (Prod. Justin Parker)

Puppy Love (Prod. Justin Parker)

National Anthem (Demo 2) (Prod. Justin Parker)

Radio (Demo) (Prod. Justin Parker)

Paradise (Prod. Justin Parker & Peter Ibsen)

Video Games (Demo) (Prod. Justin Parker & Robopop)

Take Me To Paris (Prod. Liam Howe & Guy Chambers)

Lolita (+ demos) (Prod. Liam Howe & Hannah Robinson)

Butterflies (+ early mix) (Prod. Liam Howe & Joe Cross)

Making Out (+ demo) (Prod. Matthew William Benbrook)

Diet Mtn Dew (Demo 1) (the demos are named by how they were leaked. In actuality this would be Demo 3) (Prod. Mike Daly)

In the beginning to 2012, Lana had her first televised performance that would change her career... for the worse. Her harshly criticized SNL performance would greatly impact how the general population viewed her ability to sing live for years to come, even though she has attributed the mess up to stage fright. There was even a skit on the show about it! Four days prior to the performance, she released the Lana Del Rey EP that was sampling 4 tracks from Born to Die. Born to Die was released some weeks later on January 27th, 2012 with it garnering an overall positive view. Lana also collaborated with Smiler (who previously produced and featured on her unreleased song, 'Beautiful Player') on a hip-hop cover of 'Big Spender' by Peggy Lee. With the album released, Lana did not waste anytime putting out the music videos she had for it starting with the higher budget music video for 'Blue Jeans' in March and then another one put together by herself for 'Carmen'. At the beginning of June, The Bravest Man in the Universe was released by Bobby Womack which contained Dayglo Reflection featuring Lana (who approached Bobby about a collaboration to which he promptly agreed to), in the middle of June, Cheryl Cole had released her version of Ghetto Baby that Lana had wrote, and at the end of June, an almost 4 minute long snippet of the National Anthem video was shared by her with the full video coming 3 days later. Finally, the video for Summertime Sadness was released in July. While this was happening, Lana was gearing up for the extended play of Born to Die.

She first talked about beginning her second LP on a radio interview, singing some of Young and Beautiful (then titled 'Will You Still Love Me When I'm Not Longer Young and Beautiful') and mentioned the title of 'In The Land of Gods and Monsters'. She also sang a song called 'I Sing The Body Electric' at a performance in the same month saying again it would be released on her next album. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending at how you view it...), while Lana was staying at a hotel, her hard drive was remotely accessed by a fan through an unsecured WiFi connection. The fan was able to access everything that was on her laptop and it is how about 80% of leaked songs have slowly dripped out throughout the years. Lana's statement on the situation was "To be honest, what really happened was, [sic] somebody remotely accessed my hard drive, so even songs I’ve never emailed to myself. There are hundreds of them.” Shortly after, in September, the first single from Paradise was released.

Ride was released on September 25th, 2012. Five days after Blue Velvet was released as a promotional single alongside the music video promoting H&M (who she had started modeling for!) The day before on September 24th, Lana had announced the track list, cover art, and release date along with a video posted to her YouTube that showcased snippets of all of the songs against never before seen shots from Summertime Sadness.

On October 10th, 2012, the music video for Ride was released as a short film with Lana hosting a premiere for it at Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, California. As the album grew closer, Lana posted four fan-made images that showcased a track from the EP for each four days before the album released. The day before the album was released, Lana released a quick music video for Bel Air that just featured more outtakes from the Summertime Sadness video shoot and on November 13th, Lana announced Cola as the second single from the album and a monologue using Cola's instrumental was recorded but later used in her L'Officiel video. The single release for Cola was eventually scrapped for unknown reasons. Towards the end of 2012, Lana was announced as a spokesperson for Jaguar and 'Burning Desire' would be the official promotional song for their car, F-Type. On October 31st, Lana announced the Paradise tour with dates beginning on April 3rd, 2013.

Ride premiere & the Paradise cover

Songs and some performances from 2012:

Spoiler

Lana Del Rey (EP)

Born to Die (Album)

Paradise (EP)

Spender (by Smiler)

Dayglo Reflection (by Bobby Womack)

Hollywood (Prod. Rick Nowels)

JFK (Prod. Rick Nowels)

Starry Eyed (Prod. Rick Nowels)

I Don't Wanna Go (Prod. Rick Nowels)

Young and Beautiful (Demo) (Prod. Rick Nowels)

Life is Beautiful (Prod. Dan Heath)

Lana had been teasing about being on a 1920's soundtrack, and on February 7th, 2013 she tweeted "GATSBY" therefore confirming suspicions and on April 4th, the first trailer for the film was released featuring a snippet of what was now known as 'Young and Beautiful'. On March 19th, 2013, the music video for 'Burning Desire' was released in promotion for Jaguar. On April 1st, Alice Brightsky released her debut album which featured a song called 'Lover's Fate' that Lana had collaborated on in 2006. On April 18th, two covers (Summer Wine ft. her then boyfriend, Barrie James O'Neill and Chelsea Hotel No. 2) were posted to Lana's YouTube randomly. Five days later, Young and Beautiful was released with the music video releasing around a month later on May 10th. Lana began to talk off and on about a short film for Paradise and by summer there was rumors going around that she was beginning to film one. It was confirmed in June 2013 through BTS images of Lana in different wardrobes that she was filming something, but it was still unknown what it was for. Also in June, Ridin' (by A$AP Rocky) was leaked by the producers, The Kickdrums, after they did not include it on their album. A$AP said he wanted to put it on his album, but after they leaked it he decided not to. In the next month, one of her main producers, Rick Nowels, had made a mistake in uploading some songs onto his website. The songs could easily be accessed by changing around the URL and within a couple of days, they were leaked out into the world. These songs would come to be called the 'Untouchable 5' by the fan base and included 'Hollywood', 'Angels Forever, Forever Angels', 'Starry Eyed', 'JFK', and a demo of 'Black Beauty'.

These leaks would come to be so important because in an interview Lana stated that some were meant for an upcoming album she was working on and from them leaking, she felt discouraged and eventually went a different route. The two songs that were meant for the album are 'Angels Forever' and 'Black Beauty' while the other three were possibly outtakes from the Paradise EP (evident by a track list leak during the Paradise era including the title JFK).

On the Bel Air placeholder video, Lana announced TROPICO as "i lost my reputation, i forgot my truth. But i have my beauty and i have my youth. 'TROPICO' the film, coming next year". Details were pretty sparse except for a casual 'It's coming, you little bitch' from Lana responding to a comment on YouTube. Towards the end of July 2013, Lana began to release three posters for the movie and on November 22nd, she confirmed the release date for the film. She also released two teaser trailers in the coming weeks. TROPICO was released on December 6th, 2013, and Lana hosted a premiere for the movie on the night of December 5th, where she announced her forthcoming album, Ultraviolence. We also know that in December 2013, she recorded Yes to Heaven, Fine China, Your Girl, I Can Fly (Original Version), and Shades of Cool (Demo)